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The Cameron Village Sewer Blob
These amorphous, pulsating blob-like beasts seem to have been ripped from the pages of a glorious, old E.C. comic or a bad 60’s monster movie, but scientists say that these mutant subterranean creatures are alive and well and living in a North Carolina Sewer… they just don’t know what they are! Sightings In April of 2009, the South Carolina-based Malphrus Construction was contracted to send a surveillance camera into the sewer pipes beneath Cameron Village in Raleigh, North Carolina. The purpose of this mission was to check the infrastructure of the sewer lines. According to an anonymous spokeswoman from Malphrus Construction: “We were asked by our client to inspect the sewer lines, which were built in 1949.” Because the sewers are so old, there were many infrastructure issues.” Beyond the concrete, sewage and other expected ephemera, their cameras came across a completely unexpected discovery — unidentified, undeniably grotesque, blobs attached to the sewer wall. These creatures are so bizarrely unfathomable that some believe they might well have come from out of this world. Locals quickly dubbed the bizarre phenomena “The Cameron Village Sewer Blob.” some say it looks like the creature from the movie "the blob." History After this strikingly disturbing footage was uploaded on the internet, it became an instant sensation. NBC, FOX and ABC and other news agencies covered the story, prompting both skeptics and believers alike to pop out of the woodwork and discuss the real or fictitious origins of this entity, but it wasn’t long before Raleigh public works officials came forward and confirmed that this disconcerting video footage was indeed real. Marti Gibson, the Environmental Coordinator for Public Utilities in the city of Raleigh, North Carolina, claimed to have been as confused as the rest of the world when she first looked at the video. Initially she claimed that the thing was a slime mold that was in the phase of its life-cycle where it looks like a throbbing, breathing animal, but was swift to point out that any water surging by this “slime” would pass through a treatment plant and be thoroughly cleansed. Just a few hours later, Gibson retracted this statement in an email: “The video was taken in a private sewer system by a private contractor working for them. It does not belong to the City of Raleigh nor will it reach the Neuse River Wastewater Treatment Plant.” This would seem to clearly indicate that the Public Utilities of Raleigh is more concerned with not being responsible for anything involving this living horror show, than actually finding out what it is and – if necessary – removing the entities from a public water system. The local scientific establishment seems to be following typically “conservative” protocols when asked to explain the being, and rather than forming an expedition (or at least equipping another robotic surrogate) to send into the sewer to take samples of the mysterious creature in order to find out what this thing is, they are apparently scrambling to quickly hop on whatever they believe to be the least ludicrous bandwagon in order to preserve their cherished reputations. Explanations To that end, Ed Buchan, the environmental coordinator at the Raleigh Public Utilities Department – who was quoted as stating that staff biologists were taken aback by the blob sacs and were at a loss to explain them – has made it clear that he believes that the sewer blobs are actually a colony of Tubifax worms, which had slowly worked their way into weak points in the pipes. Buchan further suggested that these creature’s spontaneous movement was a response to the heat from the robotic camera’s light, but conceded that he did not immediately recognize the creatures: “I've seen a lot of sewer TV before and I've never seen them. We were surprised. We didn't know immediately what it was… Every now and then, you see something like that. Generally, the only things you see in sewer lines are roots, grease, maybe a rat or some bugs. Thankfully I don’t have to mess too much with sewers anymore.” Investigators have pointed out that there are notable discrepancies in the Tubifax theory. A major one being that there isn’t a single lone worm on or around any of the three sacs in the video. The creatures are complete cysts with smooth surfaces and the blobs shrink back and pulsate as a solitary entity, not as a colony of loose worms. That having been said, a biology professor with the North Carolina State University, Tom Kwak, told News14 that he didn’t think it was worms, but something else altogether: “I think it’s a colony of bryozoans. They are small animals like a hydra that live together in colonies, and they stick out tentacles to feed. And when they’re disturbed, they withdraw into small tubes that they've built… bryozoans aren't dirty and don’t carry diseases, and they don’t bite or sting. There’s really no reason to clear them out unless they become an issue of clogging the sewer pipe.” This theory has, in turn, been countermanded by Dr. Timothy S. Wood, a bryozoans expert with the Department of Biological Sciences at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio: “No, these are not bryozoans! They are clumps of annelid worms, almost certainly tubificids. Normally these occur in soil and sediment, especially at the bottom and edges of polluted streams. In the photo they have apparently entered a pipeline somehow, and in the absence of soil they are coiling around each other. The contractions you see are the result of a single worm contracting and then stimulating all the others to do the same almost simultaneously, so it looks like a single big muscle contracting.” Whether these bizarre beasts are aliens, slime mold, worms, sewer mutants or gelatinous radioactive blobs hell-bent on destroying all life on Earth, one thing remains clear — there’s something unknown and very much alive lurking in the sewers of North Carolina … Some have even speculated that it could be living, breathing animated feces or a creature using the substance as an eccentric shield or camouflage from other predators that lurk the sewer systems. Video Category:Aquatic-based Cryptid Category:Cryptids Category:Cryptid Wiki Category:North America (Minus Mexico and Caribbean) Category:Worms (non-arthropod invertebrate animals) Category:Invertebrates Category:Former Cryptids Category:Urban Cryptids